


Inside a Sinking Boat

by zouisweak



Series: Zouis Week [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 18:43:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4798328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zouisweak/pseuds/zouisweak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zouis week, day 1/7: favourite AU: the one where Zayn asks Louis to leave with him, and Louis actually says yes.</p><p>(only kind of an AU, sorry)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inside a Sinking Boat

The thing about that night is that before Louis goes in, he stares at the door for a good ten minutes. He's exhausted, he wants sleep, but instead he's staring at the fake-wood door. At least he thinks it's fake. Normal wood isn't that shiny. Maybe it's just overly polished. He stares at it for so long that he stops seeing it as a door, starts seeing it in vaguer terms of colors and shapes. He never trusts his brain after a long flight. It's always liable to betray him.

Except right now, he wonders if it is a betrayal. He thinks it could be a warning. He thinks his brain could be looking out for him, telling him to not go through the fucking door. He just can't work out why. He and Zayn aren't fighting. He and Zayn are fine. And it's not like it's strange of him to steal the spare room-card and sleep in Zayn's room. He does it more often than not. It'd be perfectly normal for him to just go in.

Fuck his brain, and fuck warnings. He goes in.

During the conversation they have, the hotel room is dark, because Louis didn’t bother turning the lights on when he came in. He hadn’t expected to have to, had thought he’d just crawl into bed beside Zayn, sink into sleep, forget about how weird the day has been.

He hadn’t expected to see Zayn still up. He’d said he was exhausted from the flight, and he’s generally pretty sincere when it comes to talking about sleep.

But Zayn is still up, and it instantly puts Louis on edge. Zayn very rarely reaches two in the morning, not without alcohol or weed (or Louis) to help, and Louis definitely hasn’t known him to miss out on sleep in favour of- filling out paper work.

Maybe, Louis is willing to admit, maybe he should listen to his brain. Sometimes. Maybe it'd be better if he was just in his own room tonight. 

He doesn't leave.

“What’s that?” he asks, even though he’s not sure he wants to know. Even though he’s kind of sure he already does.

Zayn looks up at him from the clipboard pressed against his knees with a small smile, like _oh, just some more forms for how I’m leaving this band, leaving you, no big deal._

“Management sent it over.”

“Another one? Thought you had all that sorted out,” Louis says. He wonders if Zayn thinks it’s weird that he’s still just standing there, that he isn’t crawled up beside him, cuddled in. _Louis_ thinks it’s weird. Maybe Zayn hasn’t noticed. Maybe Zayn’s gotten past paying attention to Louis.

Zayn snorts. “At this point I think they’re just taking the piss, all of it can’t be necessary. Trying to scare me off, one unnecessary dotted line at a time.”

The implications are clear. _As if_. As if Zayn would be scared off. Of course he’s going to go through with it.

And Louis had known, of course he had, that this was more than their late night ramblings about what a life away from the band would be like, neither of them really taking it seriously.

This is real. And Louis is happy for him, just like the boys are, he is, because he knows it’s what Zayn needs.

He just can’t help wish it wasn’t.

And it’s not until now, Zayn staying up at 3 am after an international flight to fill out fucking _paperwork_ , on his own, smiling like it’s just par for the course, that he realises just how fucking futile those wishes are.

Zayn is leaving. Zayn is going to leave. Louis’ reality has a deadline and in a week it’s going to be replaced with something new, something achingly similar to the past five years except without the part of it that made it feel like his. Made it feel like home.

“Right. Well. Leave you to it, then,” he says, and he doesn’t even bother hide his bitterness, because there’s no point, never has been, not with Zayn who could probably right essays analysing the cadences of his speech.

“Louis-“

“No, no it’s fine-” he softens his voice, makes it less sarcastic. He hates how petty he’s being, how needy. He wishes he could just be supportive, the same way Zayn has always been for him. “It’s fine, Z, really. Just- I’d rather not be here to see it, yeah?”

Zayn looks at him, and for the first time in what feels like- and could easily be- years, Louis can’t read him, can’t see what’s on his face except some vague form of desperation.

He gives another smile, as weak as they’ve all been that day, and shuts the door carefully behind him.

~

He’s barely in his own room before there’s a knock on his door. He knows it’s Zayn because it’s their special 3-2-3 knock from when they were still teenagers, and he wonders if Zayn did it without thinking or if he was deliberately trying to remind Louis of all the history they have together. As if he could forget.

In either case, he’s never been the sort of person who could turn Zayn away (i.e., a person with no soul), so he opens the door.

It was a busy day. Louis and the boys were locked away discussing when they’d start with album five, and Zayn had been calling LA about something Louis had ignored the specifics of. They haven’t seen each other, not properly, in a while, and Louis feels his entire self grow weak when faced with such inarguable beauty. Even up close, he’s fucking perfect. Especially up close.

“Come in,” Louis says, gesturing behind himself.

Zayn does so, and his movements are jerky, and Louis can tell how fast his mind is whirring, how determined he is to catch all those thoughts and order them into something comprehensive. Sometimes how well they know each other doesn’t seem like anything other than a weapon.

“I just- Louis.”

“What.” He sits on his bed. He hates how this seems like a confrontation, already, and standing makes it seem even more so.

Zayn looks at him, turns away, and then suddenly he’s in front of him, dropping to his knees so they’re face to face. His hands rest on Louis’ thighs, and Louis wonders if there are any situations where they could get rid of that familiarity. He thinks he could hate Zayn, and he still wouldn't push him away if he wanted a hug.

“What?” he repeats.

“Come with me.” It’s said in a blur, words blended into one, and Louis’ eyes clench shut.

It’s a natural progression. They’d talked about what would happen after One Direction, and the future had always seemed like a together kind of deal. It wasn’t about what Louis would do, or what Zayn would do, but what _they’d_ do, as a pair. Louis had always been thinking of the future, especially recently, but not to the point that he was making plans. Not like Zayn. But that's not a bad thing- because when Zayn makes plans, he does it for the both of them.

“What?” he repeats, because despite all that, it’s still a shock.

“Come on Louis, please, I know you hate how they’re working us.”

“Doesn’t mean I hate the job.”

“If you leave with me we can keep the parts you like, get rid of the bits you don’t.”

“Don’t be naïve-“

“I’m not Louis, shit, I’m more aware than I’ve ever been. We could take over the fucking world together.”

“you don’t know that,” Louis laughs, looking to the side, refusing to acknowledge how fucking determined Zayn looks, eyes wide, jaw set. If he looks at him he might say yes. He's always been easy for Zayn, in every sense of the word.

“I do, though, I do. I’d make sure of it, I’d take such good care of you, we could do anything, just come with me-“

“I can’t Zayn, I can’t, and you know that.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t leave the boys. We can’t both leave the boys. It wouldn’t survive as a three-piece,” _or a four piece,_ Louis thinks, but keeps it to himself. Zayn already feels a bit guilty over his decision.  “We can’t leave the fans either, and we’d be fucking massacred if we both did it-" they're still suffering the consequences over the articles about them having to give insurance to the Immigration Board to guarantee they won't do drugs while in the Philippines. The media loves to fuck with the both of them, and this would be their wet dream.  "And me… I’m not. I’m not like you, z, I don’t know if I could do it without a band, on my own.”

“You wouldn’t be on your own. You’d never be on your own.”

Louis sighs, looking down at his side. Zayn is going onto bigger things, and inevitably, for someone like him, that’s synonymous with better things. Whether Louis stays or not, he can’t help but think it won’t be long before Zayn stops needing him.

“I don’t know why- I don’t get why you won’t let yourself have this, Lou. I know you want it- I know you want to be with me. I know you need me, just as much as I need you, and I don’t get why you won’t just fucking admit that.”

Louis can’t make eye contact. He doesn’t feel like he can do anything, right now. Zayn sighs, steps away.

“Fine,” he says, huffing self-consciously. Louis feels bad for him, having just laid himself bare like that, getting nothing in return. He instantly wants to comfort him, but instead he just watches as Zayn gets up, goes towards the door, leaves.

_AU_

Just as his hand is wrapping around the door knob, Louis feels the words ripped out of him. “What- what would we even do, Zayn? What would even happen, if we- if I left?”

Zayn doesn’t turn around for a while, his head resting against the door. When he speaks, Louis can hear the smile. “Don’t tease me, Lou.”

“I’m not- I’m not making promises, or anything, but just. What would happen?”

“I told you,” Zayn says, coming back to beside Louis, looking him in the eye, his smile still as awing as it was in X Factor boot camp, the first time Louis made him and Aiden laugh. “We’d take over the fucking world.”

And they do.

 ~

“Lou, Louis, shit, you have to get up,” Liam is saying, and Louis isn’t even angry. It’s almost a relief to get up, after those kind of dreams, even if it is to a day of meetings.

He sits up against the headrest of his hotel bed, stretching. It’s only then he notices the pillow Liam is clutching against his chest.

“What’s that for, Payno?” he laughs. Liam blushes.

“I thought- usually you’re more…volatile in the mornings.”

Usually Louis would take that as a challenge, because he’s _always_ volatile in the mornings, thank you very much, but instead he just smiles unsteadily, his head still stuck in the dream. When he was a kid, during his doctor who phase, his mother told him that dreams were glimpses into alternate realities. It had fascinated him, at the time, but now he just feels an irrational jealousy for any alternate reality version of him that still gets to see Zayn every day.

“Something up?” Liam asks, sitting at the side of Louis’ bed.

Louis sighs, looks up at the ceiling. “Zayn asked me to leave with him, you know,” he says, keeping his voice void of feeling.  He rarely talks about Zayn, but when he does it’s to Liam. He’s the only one who understands the obsession Louis had with his friend, having had a bit of one himself. It’s one of the things Louis appreciates about Liam- how much he appreciates Zayn.

“When?”

“Just before he left. Like, the night before.”

Liam’s eyebrows rise, and Louis knows what he’s thinking. _You mean before the morning he left without saying goodbye, no warning, a week earlier than he was meant to?_

“Why’d you say no?” And it’s only then that Louis realises how fucking obvious his misery must be. That Liam is genuinely confused about why he’d stay.

Louis shrugs. The word no had never left his mouth, really. It’s just that the word yes hadn’t either. “What else was I going to do?” he asks. He’s been asking himself every day since it happened.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I did the "it's just a dream" ending I'm such a cliche


End file.
